S.E.E. (the Statement, Evidence, Explanation Model), by Shawn Northfield

Gadzooks! 'Zounds! (Are you Crazy!), Exceptional Shakespeare in the Exceptional Classroom, by John Bell.

The Strategic Planning Process, by Barry Russell, Alix MacDonald, and Leslie McKernon

Writing Class? Where to Start?, by Margann MacGregor

How Do I Start?

Dress the Part

Ransack the Drama room, don a pair of tights (or not), scabbard your rapier, cock your swooshy feathered hat at a jaunty angle, and swan into the expectant classroom. Your costume serves two purposes: not only does it keep you from taking things too seriously, lightening the mood somewhat, but it also makes for a memorable introduction to the topic. You never get a second chance to make a first impression and trust me, the image of you careening about the room in fancy garb will burn itself into the very retinas of your appreciative audience (don't worry - you can not be held legally liable for the psychological damage and recurring nightmares suffered by your students).

Set A Context

Don't go into this enterprise blind, and don't lead your students where angels fear to tread without any prep time. We get jet lag travelling for five or six hours - imagine the time you need for cultural and linguistic acclimatization when travelling 400 years.

Set a historical context for the man, the theatre, and the impact. Shakespeare's life was quite a ride, and not without its controversies. The theatre of his day set the stage (no pun intended) for the modern drama. While simply jumping into the play has its merits, a brief introduction to the bard and the theatres of his day adds a new dimension to the understanding of the play. For example, Shakespeare inserted the comic and sometimes grotesquely lewd segments in even the high tragedies to appeal to the lower elements of his mixed clientele. The fact that young boys played women's roles in the theatre adds a whole new twist to plays where female characters disguise themselves as men so that there would be a boy, playing a girl, actually playing a boy. This obviously simplified things for Shakespeare. By letting your students in on the little secrets, they will absorb more of the spirit of the play and it's historical context. This information can generally be found in any good edition of Shakespeare's plays. If not, excellent reference material exists both in text and Internet sources. Either prepare a brief outline of the main points yourself, or get the kids to do a one day research project that they present the next day.

Also set a dramatic context. Make certain your students know what a soliloquy is before actually being confronted by one. As the ballpark saying goes, 'you can't tell your infielders from your outfielders without a program.' Make certain the bases are covered - aside, soliloquy, foil characters, dramatic irony, comedic relief, catharsis, comedy, tragedy, hubris, hamartia. An interesting and easy technique for teaching tragedy and comedy is to represent them as happy and sad faces. A tragedy starts with the main character at low ebb, who subsequently rises to a high point, and through some fault of his own, all is ruined and he dies at the end of the play. The plot is shaped like the proverbial frown. In contrast, any comedy from Friends to Gilligan's Island starts with the characters at a high point, then facing a crisis, then ending again on a high. Guess what? The plot is shaped like a happy face. What could be easier? The two are remarkably similar: comedy is really about a tragic situation that ends happily - a potential tragedy - where tragedy is an incomplete comedy, a comedy gone terribly wrong. While comedies have a less formal structure, it is beneficial to teach the formal structure of a tragedy, simply so that the students can see the immense amount of planning and structure that goes into writing a classic play. They are not simply thrown together, but follow a traditional, rigid pattern.

You also need to set a psychological context. Our society has evolved 400 years since Shakespeare's plays were set in stone. Frankly, many of our beliefs and perceptions have changed (for the better, let us hope). We simply do not 'get' many of the key references that drive Shakespeare's understanding of how life worked. While we cannot know everything, there are a few basic Bard-fixations that must be recognized in order to successfully navigate a play. I like to have my students explore the differences between the Elizabethan and current views of personality types. For example, I use a class period to look at the concept of the Four Humors that was prevalent at the time of Shakespeare. Many of us who have studied Shakespeare are familiar with the concept. Once I have presented this material I have the students look at modern personality theory by having them take one of the many tests available on the Internet. There are a number of tests that can be accessed by typing "personality tests" on your browser. Once they are finished I lead a discussion with the students on how their personalities influence how they see the world. I then lead into a discussion on Elizabethan personality types, and how important they were to Shakespeare. Suddenly a potentially boring lecture has become relevant.